"An error occurred during activation. Try again." Why can I not sign into imessage?

Hi,

Users Tip When the iMessages account will not Login

7:54 pm Saturday; April 8, 2017

Hi,

Start here https://getsupport.apple.com/ Choose your Country.

The Contact is to Apple Support (Apple Care) like you get when you buy any device from Apple.

I am not sure if there is a Romanian Language one but the link page should tell you.

You should have at least 90 Days support for any Hardware of Apple Software you have bought.

Anything through the App Store, even if Free is considered to have been bought.

In addition to that this is an Apple ID issue with one of their Servers and those issues are free to fix as well.

8:03 pm Sunday; April 9, 2017

Hi, maybe this post is old but seems that I have the issue now, I have macOS Sierra and I've tried all the steps above and after several tries, I decided to make an fresh instal of macOS, no success... Any help?

Hi, Thanks for your response, last thing to do from that list is call Apple, wich I never did before... I am from Romania, where there is no Apple Store so I don't know exactly what to do. Thank you again, I will look further to see how to get in contact with Apple.

HI,

Start with these 4 things

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3970

8:30 pm Monday; February 3, 2014

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

Hi Ralph,

I have the same problem and tried all of what is suggested on the page you indicate, but no success. I have also tried reboot, the hosts file looks OK, and reset the PRAM.

I run out of ideas, can you help me with that?

Thanks a lot in advance!

HI,

In System Preferences double check the Date and Time and Time Zone settings.

Check that these match you router's settings.

Also try adding a Public DNS to the Network Settings.

Try a Safe Boot

8:29 pm Monday; June 9, 2014

Hi Ralph,

thanks for your suggestions. I actually manged to sign in again after doing again a reset of the PRAM. However, despite I'm normally signed it (when I sing in on my macbook pro I get the message in my iphone and my ipad that I signed in with my macbook pro), I cannot send neither receive imessages on my mac, while I can normally send and receive from my ipad and iphone.

I already tried to delete the com.apple.ids.service.com.apple.madrid.plist file as you sugested in another discussion but this didn't help.

I'm getting desperate, how can I get it back to work??

Thanks

Hi,

A PRAM reset and A Safe Boot are not the same thing.

A PRAM/NVRAM reset will clear some caches that are not cleared that often but they are a lot lees now than they used to be.

Did you do the Safe Boot ?

8:13 pm Wednesday; June 11, 2014

It was a PRAM reset. I hold the command + option + P + R keys and let the system make the initial bell sound 3 times.

I didn't try yet the safe boot. What's the rationale for it? How is it supposed to fix the problem with imessages from mac? And most importantly, how do you do it?

Thanks!

I now tried also the safe boot but I still have the same problem.

Any clue?

Hi,

So you worked out the blue Safe Boot in the earlier post was a link.

Basically it Loads the OS minus some extensions which has the effect of clearing some caches about the things that are not included in the Start up.

If the app works in Safe Boot it will normally work when you reboot the computer.

As that has not worked we need to know if it is the app (for everyone on the computer) or just your settings.

In System Preferences > Users and Groups either create a new Mac User (I have one called "test") or enable the Guest account.

Log out of your current account and then Login to the account you are going to test in.

Set up the Messages app with your regular details.

If it works here then it is something about the details held about the app in your regular Mac user account.

If it also does not work here there is a chance it is the App itself and a Reinstall is in order.

8:12 pm Thursday; June 12, 2014

Hi Ralph,

thanks a lot for your reply. I tested the guest account and it actually works there!

As you suggest in your post, it must be some settings in my normal user account. What could it be? How can I find that out?

Again, thanks a lot for your help.

Hi,

You stated earlier that you had already deleted the "madrid" .plist with no effect.

Can I check you did this with the app closed down or at least restarted the app straight afterwards ?

If you did that close the app if open and access the ~/Library/Preferences folder again.

This time delete com.apple.imessage.bag.plist

This item stores the Apple server used for your Login to the iMessages server and contains a date/time reference.

Restarting the app after deleting this file will make it reconnect with the iMessages servers in a fresh manner which my solve things.

It may sort out any date/time issues with the stored date.

Messages is one of the app that Apple have "Sandboxed".

This means that some of it's operations are held away from other apps to prevent one app bringing down several others.

This is turn means that the route or path used by the app to Read and Write to the various .plists is different to the direct placing in ~/Library/Preferences.

The Path is ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Preferences

Mostly the items in here are then Aliases that point to the actual originals in ~/Library/Preferences. However there are exceptions.

You can copy and paste the Path above in to the Finder > Go Menu > Go to Folder dialogue box to access this folder.

Once there use the Finder's View Menu > Show Path Bar.

This adds a collection of folders across the bottom of the Finder window.

Right click on the Preferences folder at the right hand list of the Path.

Chose the Get Info option.

In the Info panel scroll to the Bottom.

Your Shortname should appear (with (Me) as well) and you should have Read and Write Permissions

If you highlight this and then use the Cogwheel type iCon it should reveal you shortname again but in Greyed out form which mean you Own the File/folder

Repeat this for each containing folder until the Library item on the left (you don't need to do the Little House icon one)

You should have Read an Write Permissions and Own all of them.

Can you confirm this ?

8:04 pm Sunday; June 15, 2014

Hi Ralph,

thanks for your reply.

Indeed when I removed the madrid file from the ~/Library/Preferences folder I had the messages app open but since then I closed and reopened several times. Moreover, I have turned off and on again the mac several times since then.

I have now also trashed the com.apple.imessage.bag.plist following your suggestion but this also made no difference. Indeed this refreshes the connection to the imessages server. One note is that during a session when I send an imessage from the mac it looks like the message was sent (even if the receiver never recives it), however, after refresh of the connection all imessages sent from the mac (that appear initially sent) are now labelled as non sent. This is true by switching off/on the mac or by doing trashing of com.apple.imessage.bag.plist and then restarting the app.

Finally I have checked the permissions for all the folders you indicated and I have read/write permission for all of them. This is how it looks like

One additional simptom that I can report is the following: every time I send an imessage from my iphone messages on my on mac seems to loose the connection to my account as it asks me again to login. I don't know if this makes sense to you.

What do you suggest else?

Thanks a lot for your help